AEROSPACE giant BAE Systems has taken a first step towards developing a multi-million-pound business park at its Samlesbury site.

The defence company employs more than 3,000 people at its East Lancashire facility, involved in four main projects including the hi-tech Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) and the Eurofighter.

Last year a project was announced which would see BAE and the North West Development Agency working together to create a giant aerospace business park over the next 15 years.

Hand in hand with this, BAE is working on its own masterplan to keep the site up to date and able to cope with its contracts.

Now a planning app-lication has been submitted which, if passed, would see a new engineering building constructed and a new entrance, primarily to deal with the JSF and Eurofighter contracts.

While the two schemes are separate, they are closely linked and the new application, submitted to Ribble Valley council last week, will see the site kept up to date ready for the aerospace park.

A spokesman for BAE Systems said: "It's to make sure we are developed to deliver the workload we need to deliver. Primarily on these two projects in the future.

"If these proposals are passed or the development is successful the first phase would be a new engineering building which we would be looking to use in 2008. As part of the development we would also be looking to create a new site entrance to Samlesbury. These are the first two initial proposals."

The business park project could see hundreds of millions of pounds spent on Samlesbury, with aerospace firms from inside and outside the UK coming together on the site.